Anthology Complex (4 page)

Now I'm stepping on more than one ant at a time, smearing their black
skin against the pavement. I start to laugh in my head. Kill that ant. Dead.
Kill those ants. Dead. I set up a rat trap, premeditated murder. I'm getting better
at this game. The rat is caught. I think, think, think to myself I should hit
it with a bat. I get, get, get a bat and I stain its internal liquids against
the concrete floor.

Then I start thinking, I should step it up a notch, and start digging up
the graves of the dead and pretend to kill them, as if they were still alive. I
think to myself, "maybe it's not homicide," but it's one step closer,
and then I wake up. Maybe to determine if someone is insane, they need both the
thoughts and the actions.

So many people are in love. Love is so common in so many lives, so much
that it seems as if it is indefinable. So much that it seems too complex to
ever really be understandable, or even be explained. But the fact of the matter
is that love is simply just another emotional feeling. Like rage, like pride,
love is simply a feeling. Love is a feeling just like the feeling you get after
you kill something.

The same way a person searches for love, a person can search for that
feeling you get after you've ended a life. Of course, that mysterious feeling
is not common, like love, but both of these feelings are more than they appear
to be when perceived by human beings. There are so many circumstances
surrounding love, so many webs that love can be simple and complex at the same
time.

I'm wide awake still laying in bed, and I look to my right and I see my
composition notebook laying there as well with a pen on it. I keep it next to
me so I can immediately write down the dream I have. I stare at this notebook,
and I think to myself, this is my companion. I think to myself, it's sad, but I
accept it. I take it, I open it and I start writing the dream down. "I'm
carrying something heavy."

Chapter 8:

THE DOUBLE HELIX

Three years ago, I had this nightmare. I take off my happy theater mask
and I look into his eyes. I start to look around and from my surroundings I can
tell he's a politician. Eventually I can tell he's the mayor of a city.
Eventually I can tell he's the mayor of New York City. I guess I already knew these
things because they were part of the reason I was here. My partner asks me why
I took off my mask and I tell him it's because I want him to see my face. I
look into the eyes of the painting again. This is a painting of the mayor of
New York City.

After a minute or two, we hear talking and footsteps, so my partner and
I hide the best way we know how. The mayor walks into his office alone and he
turns on the light, and then sits down in his seat. The seat of the mayor of
New York City. I get out of my hiding spot and walk towards him, gun pointing
at those eyes, and the entire time he is shouting with his arms in the air. My
partner now gets out. I cock the shotgun and I aim. Then I shoot.

His painting of himself is ruined now, covered in blood. Who hangs a
painting of themselves in their own room? The front door kicks open and shots
are fired. My partner goes down, but not before he gets a few shots of his own
in.

I take cover, and I see my partner laying on his back about four meters
away from me. My heart is pounding. I don't know if it's because I just killed
a powerful man or if it's because a close friend of mine is in danger. The
pounding gets louder and louder until it finally wakes me up.

What does it take to truly change the way the world works? Do certain
people have to die? Do certain people have to live? Someone said that the more
things change, the more they stay the same. I could also kill the next mayor of
New York City, and then the one after that and the one after that, but even though
the people in this seat change, the seat itself never changes. The people
change, but the seat stays the same. So the world and the way it works stays
the same. Sometimes what seems like true change is actually just the process of
repetition. The process of repetition.

A king named Solomon said that there is nothing new under the Sun, and
this is probably true. Every day we wake up, we go through our day, and then we
go to sleep, until we wake up the next day to do it all over again. Rinse and
repeat. Every day the Sun comes up, and then the Sun goes down. We are born, we
have children, and then we die. Our children our born, and they have their own
children, and then they die. Our children's children are born, and they have
children, and then they die. A way to keep our species alive in a
never-changing world.

These thoughts reflect the image of the double helix; the name of the
structure or form our DNA takes. Two perfect spirals that continually repeat
themselves. Because DNA is almost the road map to life, it is sort of poetic
that it would take the form of a repeating structure. The same repeating
structure that is symbolic to the lives we live.

The same repeating structure that is symbolic to a world that will
probably never change. A world that can't change. Maybe a world that doesn't
need to be changed.

There is a story of a group of humans who could only live for six hours.
In most cases these humans would only live to see a world with light or a world
with darkness, but there were some lucky humans who saw the change from day to
night, or from night to day, but they didn't know what was happening.
Unfortunately, before they could understand and document these changes and what
was happening, they would die.

After a while, along came a human who could live for an entire week.
This human saw changes from day to night and from night to day multiple times,
and this human told the other humans that could only live for six hours that he
or she could tell what was going to happen next.

So this human would tell the the other humans that soon there would be
light, and while some humans died before then, the lucky ones saw this change
and thought that this human who predicted this change was some sort of higher
being, but eventually that human's week was over and he or she died.

After a while, along came a human who could live for years. This human
experienced all the different seasons. This human understood the seasonal
changes and the changes from day to night and night to day, and he or she
documented and explained them.

Eventually this human told the other humans, who at the time could only
live for a few months, that he or she could tell them what to prepare for next.
So this human tells the other humans that snow and great cold is coming, and
the ones who were lucky enough to last to see this change thought that this
human was some sort of higher being.

Eventually this human died after living for so many years. After a very,
very long time, along came a human who could live forever. After reading the
documents and recordings of previous humans, he or she realized that every
thing just repeats itself, even on the grandest scale. He or she saw the end,
and then watched as the beginning started again. In this beginning, the human
watched as these people who could only live for six hours were born, and then
died.

Chapter 9:

THERAPEUTIC SILENCE

It's been a little over a week since Joe has been in a coma. By now I
thought that he would have been out of it, but he's not. The people that work
at the hospital tell me that he only has a few relatives, and that they can't
reach most of them. The ones that they actually do get a hold of don't want to
visit, either because they live too far away or they aren't that close to Joe.
In the end I guess he is stuck with me.

I'm on my way out to go visit him, this will probably be my last visit.
I hope it's my last visit. I hope he wakes up soon and returns to business as
usual. I walk through the front door of my apartment building and I see the
woman who just moved in kneeling on the ground. She's gardening.

She looks up at me and smiles, and that's when I immediately remember a
dream I had of her a couple of nights ago. In the dream she is helping me with
something, but I can't remember what. It's unfortunate that I can't remember
some dreams that I have as well as others. Sometimes I wake up knowing I just
had a dream, but I can't remember the dream for the life of me.

I'm standing there, looking at her with a weird expression on my face
and trying to remember this dream, then her smile begins to slowly fade. She
asks me if I'm okay, and I tell her I was fine. I tell her it was weird to see
her gardening because I had never seen anyone ever garden around an apartment
building. I always thought that was done usually around houses or nice places.
She gets up and she says to me, "Your home is your home." And slowly
the smile grows back onto her face, and once again I can't do anything but
smile back at her.

She's wearing a pair of jeans so I can't see her fake leg, but for a
small amount of time I can't stop thinking about it. I didn't dare ask about
it. She then starts to talk about how she didn't really introduce herself when
I helped her move the television, and she tells me her name is Lynne. She tells
me her kids' names are Sarah and David. A lovely family.

I asked her what kind of flowers she was planting, and she told me they
were going to be zinnias. She told me it was going to be a shade garden. I
didn't really know what she was talking about but I would find out when she was
finished. A little while after talking, I see a woman walking her dog. She's
walks in our direction as if she is going to enter our apartment building.

Lynne sees the lady a little after I do and she tells me it's her
sister, Claire. Claire was coming over for dinner. Lynne introduces me to
Claire, and then invites me over for dinner as well, but I tell her I have to
meet a friend. Now across the street there is a man walking his dog. This man's
dog and Claire's dog start barking at each other. Bark, bark, bark, it gets so
annoying.

It starts to remind me of that terrible ringing sound. The phone
ringing, ringing, ringing. Sometimes the ringing drives you so nuts you want to
just break the phone and live the rest of your life in solitude. Bark, bark,
bark. Now I want to kill the dogs. Stop barking. Lynne says goodbye to me, and
she goes inside the building with Claire and her dog. The barking stops. I look
at Lynne's work in progress and then leave.

The entire way to the hospital, on that dirty bus, I can't help but
think if animals have souls. A lot of people say the difference between people
and animals is that a person knows the difference between right and wrong. That
people have a working moral compass. That people have a certain unexplainable
bond with other life forms. But what about the dog that lays there next to its
dead master, laying there with those eyes that want to cry. Laying there sad,
and when it sees the person who killed its master, it begins to bark
uncontrollably.

What about the goat and the horse that reside on the same farm who begin
to go every where with each other, and begin to care for each other, so much
that when one is sick the other stays by its side. What about the humans who
hunt other humans. The sociopaths who kill for fun, for sport. The serial
killers who show no remorse. What about the humans who strive to benefit
financially off of wars that are unnecessary. Do they have any more of a soul
than that dog, or that goat, or that horse?

I get to the hospital, and then to Joe's room and I sit on the chair. I
think to myself, what's the point of this. It's not therapeutic for Joe. It
does nothing for me. But still I sit, hoping that he will wake up so I don't
have to come back here. I guess the only real reason I do it is because no one
else has come to visit him.

How would it look if a man was never visited by anyone throughout the
entire duration of his hospitalization. At least when he wakes up, if he wakes
up, he will owe me.

After a while I begin to remember the dream that I couldn't remember.
Something happened to me and I went to Lynne for advice. She was able to
comfort me, to help me with this problem I had. This internal struggle that
keeps me prisoner. It was this strong woman in a tiny body. This woman who
tells jokes and gives life to plants even thought a part of her has been taken
away, she guides me through this dark hallway with her slight limp and her
bright yellow dress.